-------- Original Message --------

> The design of Ada was done in a series of a requirements
> documents. The first such was called Straw Man.
> I believe Ironman was the last requirements document before
> the actual developent of Ada.
>

Steelman was the last requirements document. Out of the competitive process
Green and Red were the finalist designs and I think Green was renamed Ada.

>> AFAIK, Ada was inspired from Pascal, itself
>> inspired from Algol.
> Its *syntax* was inspired from Pascal.
> Its semantics was inspired by security constraints.

Actually originally they devised requirements and looked for a language or maybe
two that could meet them and replace the 450 languages the D.O.D. had in use at
the time. It was decided that whilst Pascal was the closest to achieving that it
wasn't good enough and I guess naturally formed a source of inspiration for
Green that incidentally became the winning language. So I guess you could say
Ada was inspired from Pascal but there's a lot more to it.

-- 
All the best,
             Kevin Chadwick